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The Secret Rose Garden

By Florence Lederer

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Idols, Girdles, and Christianity

IDOLS, GIRDLES, AND CHRISTIANITY

ARE you still turning to great and small?
Pondering on religion and piety,
Teachership and discipleship?
Which mean hypocrisy and bondage.
Then idols and girdles
And Christianity are still yours.

IDOLS
THE idol's real being is not vain
Because God created it,
And all things from Him are good.
Being is pure good, if it contains evil
That comes from "other."
Truth is idol-worship,
If the Mussulman only knew;

But he sees in idols
Only the visible creature,
Not the Truth hidden in the idol.
Idol-worship is unification,
Since all things are the symbols of Being.

By counting beads, repeating prayers,
And reading the Koran,
The heathen becomes not a Mussulman.
The man to whom true infidelity becomes revealed
With pretended faith becomes disgusted.

Within every body a soul is hidden,
And true faith conceals infidelity.

Who adorned the face of the idol
With such beauty?
And who becomes an idol-worshipper
Unless God wills it?

In all things
See but One, say One, know One,

THE GIRDLE
THE mark of service
Is the knotted girdle.
So gird your loins, like a valiant man
With manliness.
Cast aside vain tales,
And mystic states and visions;
Dream not of lights,
Of marvels, of miracles,
For your miracles are contained
In worshipping the Truth;
All else is pride, conceit,
And illusion of existence.

CHRISTIANITY
I SEE the desire of Christianity
Is purification from self,
And liberty from bondage.

There is a sanctuary of the soul,
The blessed portal of unity,
The nest of the Eternal.
God's Spirit (Jesus),
Who proceeds from the blessed Spirit,
Taught this doctrine.

In you is placed a soul,
Which is a sample of this blessed Spirit.
Find release from humanity's carnal desire
And you will enter the Divine Life.
And he who is pure as the angels are
Will be carried up to the fourth heaven.

THE MOSQUE AND THE CLOISTER
IF "other" and "others" are before your eyes,
Then a mosque is no better
Than a Christian cloister;
But when the garment of "other" is cast off by you,
The cloister becomes a mosque.